Critical Urban Planning, Mapping and Evolution of the Urban Green in the Historic Expansion Plans of the City of Palma (Majorca)

Abstract

This paper examines the urban green planning in the three historical expansion plans of Palma (Calvet, 1901; Bennazar, 1917; Alomar, 1943), with the finality to clarify the genesis and subsequent development of the main parks and gardens public areas of the city, in addition to the road trees. The germ of these three plans is also analyzed, their content in relation to the urban green matrix, and the primitive characteristics of the space to be developed, as well as the urban criticism that the expansion and reform projects raised before and after their approval. The theoretical and conceptual framework from which this work starts is that of the nineteenth-century extensions of Spanish cities, and specifically those executed in the city of Palma, whose green infrastructure and its formal progress have been aspects that have been little studied. Using a working method of direct consultation with the sources, the detailed review of the memories of these plans and their respective plans has allowed to gather in a synthesis map the resulting urban layout and its green matrix, to contrast it with the current urban reality. The result is the verification of the disfigurement and denaturalization of the initially programmed green areas, although from the year 1973, in the successive general urban planning plans –especially that of 1985–, there is a renewed interest in the restoration of green areas in the city and its rigorous planning as an urban regeneration strategy with environmental and sustainability criteria.